First off, in all fairness, I would like to point out that the article you referenced is actually an op-ed (opinion / editorial) article written by none other than Barack Obama. No one should ever make an "informed" decision on a subject based on an op-ed piece, especially one with a clearly partisan bias.
Don't feel bad, I would have pointed out the same thing had you used Fox News, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc., as sources. None of these are objective analysis based on facts.
The whole death panel argument is ridiculous, any sane person knows this. However, there are still some legitimate arguments against the public option. While I admire the universal systems found in Canada and many European countries, it remains to be seen whether or not our government is able to operate as effectively and efficiently as theirs do. In many ways, their governments are much more sophisticated than ours, and less influenced by the lobbyists, waste, and corruption that have come to define BOTH parties in D.C. I have little faith that a public option in the U.S. would yield the same positive results that they do in other nations. One need only to compare the American public education system to public education systems in Europe to see that our government is not as well-run as theirs.
Another factor to take into consideration is the cost. Even Obama admits that you cannot insure 46 million people for free. This is obvious to anyone with any common sense -- expanding coverage will cost money. The question is, who will pay for it? Do we pass the bill on to later generations? Cut costs by cutting back on coverage and benefits? Raise taxes on the wealthy or those who have insurance, or the population as a whole? Raising taxes is never popular, especially when 85% of the populace already have health care. The universal care proposal ends up looking like a form of welfare for those who cannot afford it.
ON THE OTHER HAND... those on the right fail to realize that WE ALREADY PAY FOR THOSE WHO CAN'T AFFORD HEALTH CARE. We pay for it in the form of higher insurance premiums, just as you pay more in auto insurance to cover uninsured motorists. No hospital in the U.S. is allowed to turn away a sick or dying patient, regardless of whether or not they are a U.S. citizen or have health insurance, they are required to treat them. And they pass the cost on to the government and the insurance companies, who in turn pass the cost on to YOU.
To those who say they don't want government "meddling" in health care, I don't suppose you've ever heard of Medicare? Of course, people will be quick to point out that Medicare is headed for bankruptcy -- what do you expect when you insure the highest-risk group of them all, the elderly? With the elderly, it's not a question of whether or not they will get sick, it's a question of WHEN and HOW OFTEN they will get sick. The reason that Medicare is going to be dangerously underfunded in the near future is because the baby boomers are heading for retirement, and there aren't enough of the rest of us to cover their rising insurance costs. Perhaps this is part of where the whole "death panel" fear comes from -- the realization that providing substantial coverage to an ever-increasing elderly population is only going to get more and more expensive until it becomes unsustainable without raising taxes or making some kind of cuts in care. And just as the 85% don't want to be taxed higher to help cover the 15%, the young do not want to be taxed higher in order to support the old.
Being a free market, strongly capitalist, pro-individualistic society, Americans are rarely willing to sacrifice in order to help others, especially when we feel that the "others" are perfectly capable of supporting themselves -- or should be, at least. Of course this is not always the case -- homeless people can't just "get a job", unemployment will never reach 0%, and some people are never going to be able to afford $1500 a month to provide health insurance for their family, no matter HOW many jobs they work.
Moving on to another proposal, tort reform. Absolutely this is something that we should look into -- however, at the same time, I don't think we should simply let doctors off the hook when they make stupid mistakes that cost lives. Of course many of these incidents are nothing more than unforseeable accidents that could not be prevented, where the doctor is not at fault, but there are also several cases of legitimate malpractice where a doctor did something foolish that resulted in death, injury, or infection of a patient. Is there really any amount of money that can heal the pain of needlessly losing a loved one? If your child died as a result of a physician's poor decision, wouldn't you want to sue that physician? Wouldn't you expect justice of some kind?
When a person takes a job in the medical community, they are taking on a much greater responsibility tha